California Community Colleges to Use New Skills Builder Metric

On March 30th, California Community Colleges will begin tracking wage outcomes for “skills-builders.” These students enroll in courses at a community college not to earn a credential or to transfer to a four-year school, but to get a promotion at work or earn a higher salary. According to the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office, there were 86,328 skills-builders in the system in 2011-12.

The California Community Colleges Board of Governors established the scorecard to measure student success at the system’s 112 community colleges. Currently, the scorecard provides the percentage of students who complete a degree, certificate, apprenticeship, or who transfer to a four year college. However, the new scorecard will include the skills-builders metric, which will show salary increases for students who take one or two courses, but don’t earn a credential or transfer.

“We in the California Community Colleges have long been frustrated knowing that we did not have a way to measure the success of students who come to us and take just a class or two to add skills, then re-enter the labor force,” Chancellor Brice Harris wrote in the Sacramento Bee.

WDQC is excited to see wage records used to quantify a different type of success, and look forward to sharing the newest version of the scorecard upon its release.